The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci

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Page 1203 of 1565.
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There will be eternal fame also for the inhabitants of that town,
constructed and enlarged by him.

All communities obey and are led by their magnates, and these
magnates ally themselves with the lords and subjugate them in two
ways: either by consanguinity, or by fortune; by consanguinity, when
their children are, as it were, hostages, and a security and pledge
of their suspected fidelity; by property, when you make each of
these build a house or two inside your city which may yield some
revenue and he shall have...; 10 towns, five thousand houses with
thirty thousand inhabitants, and you will disperse this great
congregation of people which stand like goats one behind the other,
filling every place with fetid smells and sowing seeds of pestilence
and death;

And the city will gain beauty worthy of its name and to you it will
be useful by its revenues, and the eternal fame of its
aggrandizement.

[Footnote: These notes were possibly written in preparation for a
letter. The meaning is obscure.]

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